A Put the damper on like it looked when you first got the bike, but keep all of the bolts loose for now. The eyelet (with the air valve) goes to the rear, the clamp on the body goes in the middle with the cable guide hole to the rider's left. With all the bolts on loose, continue to step B.
B Sit on the bike to set the bolts in their natural position. This is important because a bolt tightened out of place can inhibit the damper's performance.
C Sit on the seat or lean on it with your chest when you tighten the back bolt and the front bolts. They need that weight to hold them in the proper spot when you tighten the front bolts on the body.
D The rear bolt bolts through the E-link, which must be able to rotate slightly as the damper compresses. The bolt should not be too tight.
E When you tighten the middle bolt, just make it a gentle hand tight. It should be able to slip a little if it needs too. Don't worry: the middle and rear bolts don’t have to be really tight to do their job.
If you have technical questions that are not answered in these instructions, please call or email us.

Seems like very specific instructions to ensure shock and E Link can work properly. I'd have a wee check to make sure previous owner hadn't "tightened" all the bolts.

The elink is really just a tube with the hole in the middle offset from the centre.
Doing the bolt up tight without having first compressed the suspension a couple of times gives it a bit more stiction than normal, but it still works. I expect it is putting more vertical force on the shock shaft though.

Doing the elink bolt up too tight will just mean that you will pinch the end of the shock between the (now distorted) swingarm, and you lock the rear suspension solid.

I'd sort of worked out it was just an offset bush mounting. Apart from not tightening bolt too much, it would be essential to keep the E Link well lubed or as you say there's going to be vertical movement of shock shaft.

Can't really see what extra stiffness it imparts to rear triangle if bolts cannot be done up tight. For extra stiffness it would still require a side loading on shock, I think. Don't think it would make any difference to how it rides if the centre mounting on shock was binned. It would then be no different to other Santa Cruz's in the way rear end works.

I still think that with the shock being rigidly mounted there has to be side to side loading on shock shaft if the reason for the design is to be believed.
If the rear swing-arm isn't stiff enough that it requires the help of the shock to prevent it moving from side to side, there's something wrong.
Someone else posted that the Tazmon was the only SC that had that arrangement of fixed shock and E Link eccentric bush. From appearances the design of rear swing-arm looks no different to the other SC's. If they work OK why the pointless overcomplication of the E Link?

It's the wrong solution for a design problem that probably only exists in the minds of the PR/bullshit department.

This was Santa Cruz' first frame, from earlish days in mass produced full suspension history and lots of different ideas were being tried. This was one thing that made them different from the competition.

Yep, it was an over-complication that probably wasn't necessary and cost money. Didn't stop them selling many hundreds of them over a four or five year period though, but obviously it was dropped for the Heckler. Like you say, the rear triangle and main pivot design is essentially the same as a Heckler, so is sufficiently strong enough to work without the extra shock mount.

I still think that it is a worthy design, no flimsy shock bushes to wear out for starters, which seems to be such a common complaint on new bikes.

The front mech on mine is 31.9mm top pull, top swing (there isn't much clearance between the mech and swing arm, but enough). Because you have a later frame where the main pivot plate does not span the gap between the top and downtubes, you can run either top or bottom swing mechs I think.

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